Venue has sat empty for nearly 30 years, but its owners see it as the anchor of a revitalized music district on the North Side, a vision supported by Mayor Rahm Emanuel

The front doors are boarded up in shades of gray and beige, while the weathered marquee, propped up by four poles anchored near the street, displays empty light-bulb sockets and the rusty white letters out front spelling “UPTOWN.” Stragglers in this diverse, ever-struggling neighborhood might lean against the boards for a smoke or cellphone chat, but nothing's going on here. Hasn't been, really, for almost 30 years.

Here's a classic photo of urban blight.

Here's the crumpled paper wrapping around a diamond.

Remove the padlocks from the makeshift wooden doors, step through the entryway into Uptown Theatre's main lobby, however, and you're in gasp city. What you see makes the Chicago Theatre's grand entrance look like a guesthouse foyer.

The space is big enough for Chicago Bears scrimmages and elegant enough for a royal ball. The almost pristine gray and black marble floor leads to a pair of curved, majestic, red-carpeted staircases and is flanked by ornate pillars, figurines, grates, gargoyles, carvings, frescoes and other ornamentations so intricate and beautifully rendered that it would take weeks to admire them all. One floor-to-ceiling slice of column and wall shines brighter than the others, its 24-carat gold and silver leaf designs restored 20 years ago to show how this jewel used to gleam.

That's just the main lobby. Pass through numerous other spaces, all designed contrastingly and painstakingly, and eventually you reach the Uptown Theatre's sprawling, gracefully raked, dramatically domed auditorium, which boasts what was billed on the theater's 1925 opening-night marquee as "an acre of seats in a magic city."

Jerry Mickelson said he has been in awe of this place since he first passed through its doors in 1974. On Oct. 31, 1975, his company, Jam Productions, produced its first concert there: the Tubes. On Dec. 19, 1981, it produced the Uptown's last show: the J. Geils Band.

"There was no heat," the 60-year-old promoter recalled. "The bathrooms were barely functioning. Things were starting to deteriorate then, and that's when I said to the owner, 'You can't open this anymore.' Because he hadn't put money in it. So we said, 'We're out. You've got to close it.'"

Almost 30 years later, the Uptown Theatre remains shuttered, an oversized symbol of the teasing promise and ongoing dilapidation of the Uptown neighborhood. Every few years there's a flurry of talk about restoring the theater and giving the neighborhood back its long-ago bustle — all while those wooden planks outside keep serving as a barrier between the public and its magnificent lobby.

Yet despite a continued economic downturn that has dried up public and private funding sources, a newfound sense of optimism is gathering around the prospect of eventually reopening Uptown Theatre as an anchor to an Uptown entertainment district. Mickelson has been pushing for such a development since he and his Jam partner Arny Granat (and their spinoff company, UTA II) bought the theater out of bankruptcy in 2008 for a reported $3.2 million, but Emanuel has moved the issue to the front burner with his recent declarations of support for a music hub in the neighborhood.

"It can happen now because people are finally seeing the intertwined connection between culture and economic development," the mayor said in an interview Monday.

The two new aldermen who represent the quirkily divided neighborhood — Harry Osterman of the 48th Ward (which includes the Uptown Theatre and Green Mill Jazz Club a few doors south) and James Cappleman of the 46th (which includes the nearby Riviera Theatre and Aragon Ballroom) — are encouraging the effort, as are various city departments. Mickelson also recently signed on Phil Tagami, an Oakland-based developer who spearheaded the pricey but neighborhood-transforming restoration of that city's historic Fox Theater, as a consultant. Tagami is in town this week for meetings with Mickelson, the aldermen, city officials and community representatives.

"It's like the stars are all in alignment," said Michelle Boone, the city's Cultural Affairs and Special Events commissioner.

Of course, the stars are one thing. Money is another. Mickelson's estimated price tag for restoring the Uptown to its former glory?

$70 million.

"There's going to be some problems with that," said Danny Bell, a retired Chicago History Museum security guard waiting for the bus at Lawrence Avenue and Broadway last week, laughing upon hearing the figure. "I don't think there's $70 million in cash in the whole country."

But, Mickelson likes to point out, the Uptown's architects created it "not for today but for all time," and he intends to renew that promise.